Harmlessness (TWIABP) By Susan McLean

The World Is A Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid To Die's new album is titled Harmlessness. (Shouldn't that have a few more words to it???) Released just a few days ago, on September 25th, Harmlessness has been all the buzz. Harmlessness is a much more cohesive album than Whenever, If Ever, but still has all the elements that (I) love about TWIABP. Founded in Willimantic, CT, where I'm living currently, I have some special ties to this brand of emo revival. But as Noisey notes, this isn't emo revival anymore, it's post emo. 

TWIABP has about a million members, so if you're wondering who's actually singing to you (it's a toss up) here's what their Facebook says: "Members: lineup is constantly expanding and contracting. recording and live performance lineups vary. CURRENTLY: David Bello - Vocals Josh Cyr - Bass Derrick Shanholtzer-Dvorak - Guitar, Vocals Steven Buttery - Drums Chris Teti - Guitar, Trumpet Dylan Balliett - Guitar, Vocals Katie Shanholtzer-Dvorak - Keyboards, vocals Tyler Bussey - Guitar, vocals Nick Kwas - Violin, vocals, being a real-life Waluigi"

I've seen TWIABP live quite a few times, most recently at Broken World Fest, and there were more members than stage. This album does an amazing job of blending (Pitchfork says it better than I'll ever be able to): 

Emo is a genre built on divisive vocals, and the World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die represented the entire spectrum of such voices on their debut Whenever, If Ever. Between the screamy guy, the yelpy guy, the nervous guy who sang as if sweating through his pocket protector, and the open invitation for anybody else in the band to pipe in whenever they felt it might lend an extra energy to a song, it was a love-it-or-dismiss-it affair, even by the standards of an emo revival that favors messy, overstuffed statements. The eight-piece band may have filtered their updated emo through the sensibilities of some of the most broadly popular indie rock of the '00s, but they were fundamentally a niche act.

On their sophomore album Harmlessness, they become less of one. In an effort to smooth out their rough edges after some lineup changes, TWIABP start with the roughest of them all: those voices. The screamy guy is gone, and the singer who emerges as the de facto pack leader, David Bello, has ironed most of the jitters out of his delivery. Those more approachable vocals set the tone for a record that's more orderly than its predecessor but no less sweeping. These songs still build, crash, weep, and rejoice, often all within the span of a few minutes, and the band still has no interest in moderation. If anything, Harmlessness actually has more going on than Whenever, If Ever, but it’s all done more tastefully, and the album’s warm, open production makes it easier to take in just how sophisticated these arrangements are—without all those voices crowded on top of each other, for instance, you can hear every violin stroke. TWIABP have succeeded where past generations of emo bands have often stumbled: tidying up their sound without losing any of the exuberance and immediacy that made that sound so striking in the first place.

The album is beautiful and smart (not that TWIABP isn't always) and my words won't do the ambiance justice, so I highly suggest that you put this album on, fairly loud, and lay back in bed, and just listen. 

A few of my favorites are You Can't Live There Forever, January 10th, 2014, The Word Lisa, and I Can Be Afraid of Anything. I only implore you to listen to the album as a whole before you pick and choose. Please also support TWIABP and buy the album as well as merch (their stuff is hilarious), and for a fairly amusing time, follow TWIABP on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, etc. 

Note: All reviews linked, and the photo of the album art is from Pitchfork. All opinions not cited are my own, but since everyone loves this album so much, maybe give it a listen?